2025 In-The-Making: An AIM Lab Year Recap

Welcome back to our newsletter. In this 2025 recap, we share member spotlights and our ongoing projects that reflect the thoughtful, creative, and critical access-making happening across our community

Access in the Making Lab

Jan 20, 2026

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An image reads “2025” in big numbers and underneath it “in-the-making” with the logo of the AIM LAB in the top left corner.

Members’ Spotlight

Roï Saade

Huge congratulations to Roï, who has been busy since launching the Huwawa publishing house, with lots of exciting projects already underway.

Roï recently published Landing, a photobook by Maen Hammad exploring the lives of Palestinian skateboarders in the occupied West Bank as they navigate the layered realities of Israeli settler-colonial domination. The book offers a thesis on skateboarding as a form of resistance to a headspace of violence. Documented between 2015 and 2022, it captures the fleeting moments of escape and the indomitable spirit of skateboarding. Check it out here.

He also launched the Bound Narratives Photobook Festival in Tunis, co-organized with photographer Tamara Abdul Hadi. Bound Narratives is a nomadic exhibition that brings together a curated selection of photobooks conceived from and about the Middle East and North Africa by a diverse range of artists and photographers. Evolving from previous editions in Beirut, Florence, Montreal, and Sarajevo, the Tunis edition expanded into a full festival with exhibitions, workshops, talks, and concerts across venues including B7L9 Art Centre, 32bis, and Mouhit. More details at the Kamel Lazaar Foundation site.

A rendered image of a red book with black and yellow scratches on the cover. Red cloth band holds the spine. — **Photobook cover for** **Landing**

An image of a gallery with a blue table and benches. On the table, a collection of photography books are being browsed by people. Some are reading the books, one is staking a photograph of a spread. In the background, more people are checking the rest of the exhibition. — Festival installation view from Bound Narratives Tunis

Kim Fernandes

We’re sad to lose Kim Fernandes, who recently wrapped up a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto, but thrilled to celebrate a huge milestone: Kim has started a new role as Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Brown University! At Brown, they’re also affiliated with the Data Science Institute, the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, the Population Studies Center, the Program in Science, Technology and Society, and the Center for Technological Responsibility, Reimagination and Redesign, what a lineup!

This year has also brought several major recognitions: they were elected to the Board of the Society for Disability Studies (SDS), serving a two-year term on the Events and Conference Committee; selected for the Ann Johnson Institute’s 2025 Book Manuscript Workshop; and their dissertation received an Honorable Mention for the 2025 Council on Anthropology and Education Frederick Erickson Outstanding Dissertation Award.

We’re so proud of Kim, deeply grateful for their contributions to AIM Lab, and excited to cheer them on from afar.

A brown person with black hair falling past their shoulders looks at the camera, beginning to smile. They wear a black blazer over a white shirt.

Jessie Stainton

This June, Jessie took part in the SIM Residency Program in Reykjavík, Iceland alongside artist Francis Ouellette. The duo gathered material for Spaces of Wonder, a multimedia project exploring climate degradation, tourism politics, and the romanticization of place. Their work included fabric dyes made from invasive lupins, 3D scans, field recordings, and video experiments, culminating in a residency showcase at Korpúlfsstaðir and a performance at White Wall Studio in Montreal. Jessie also performed at the Making Time Festival in Montreal on September 27th, blending field recordings with ambient and experimental sound. She’s teaching Visual Culture this fall in Concordia’s Communication Studies Department and continues to host her monthly radio show on n10.as (first Saturdays, 3–5 pm).

3D scan of the residency expo:https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=LKhmcQAnLB5

**1-Jessie performing at** **Making Time Festival** **on September 27. 2-Still from** **Drones No Drones**, a short film created during the SIM residency. 3- Jessie separating lupins for natural dye in her SIM Studio overlooking the sea. Lupins are an invasive species that produce yellow, green, and blue pigments.

Rachel Rozanski

This spring, Rachel spent two months at the Doris McCarthy Residency collecting, documenting, sampling and drawing for her ongoing research. Over the summer, she joined the FEELers Summer Camp hosted by the FEELed Lab and Astrida Neimanis in the Okanagan, where participants explored embodied and land-based approaches to environmental research and care. This fall, she’s continuing her research at the ArtsIceland Residency in the Westfjords, developing a new film and multimedia exhibition.

**1–2. Stills from Rachel’s Iceland film. 3–4. Research photographs from the Leslie Spit and Doris McCarthy Residency.**

Meesh Sara Fradkin

AIM is also happy to welcome Meesh to the team. Meesh Sara Fradkin is a writer and artist working with sound, text and media. She is a PhD candidate at McGill University.

On September 20, 2025, her first full-length album, ‘Bunny’s apartment, the beach’ was released by Interzone Editions. Each cassette includes graphic score transcriptions by Phoenix Reign Herring, housed in 4.25” × 5.25” glassine envelopes. The cassette and digital versions can be found at interzoneeditions.bandcamp.com.

Last winter, Syllabus Project published her syllabus/text ‘Deny, defend, depose, detain’. It can be found here: https://syllabusproject.org/deny-defend-depose-detain/.

In December 2024, Meesh also published their text Deny, Defend, Depose, Detain through the Syllabus Project, available here.

1-Image of Meesh with Jessie at a performance. 2- Photo Album cover for *Bunny’s apartment, the beach* showing graphic score transcriptions by Phoenix Reign Herring. 3-4 The first image in this post is the graphic score transcription for the track “Issue project bathroom”. Granular halos with little snowflakes, rain, teardrops, and puddles are overwhelmed by bigger snowflakes----similar to the snowstorm that we experienced over the last day.

Communication Board

As an ongoing project at AIM Lab, we started a monthly communication board project where members can install a quote and use the wall to curate a message. For the first round, AIM Lab Member Nicholas wrote his quote “RADICAL CARE HEMS THE EDGES OF ACCESS.” Grounded in his research on young carers and the Lab’s values, the quote frames care and access as everyday, collective work shaped by young carers’ lived realities.

Thank you for reading

Thanks for reading and for supporting AIM Lab throughout 2025. We’re proud of everything our members have been working on, and we’re excited to continue sharing updates, projects, and events with you in the new year.